Diary of a Wedding Planner in Love (Tales Behind the Veils Book 2) (9 page)

Wednesday, January 29th

I thought he wasn't going to show last night. It was about twenty minutes after eight when he finally rang my bell, and I had worked myself into a frenzy convinced he wasn't coming.

I flung open the door and burst into tears immediately. And I mean an ugly cry, too. A snot-running, red-faced, spit-hanging-from-my-lips, eyes-squished-shut, hyperventilating kind of ugly cry.

He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me to his chest, softly saying
sshh
over and over again. I fell against him with the full weight of my emotions. He was the source of my pain and my comfort. I clung to him with desperation even as I felt his torso stiffen against me.

Eventually, he led me over to the couch to sit while he went and got me tissues and a glass of water. I drank it to rinse the taste of snot and tears from my mouth, but it all threatened to come back up almost immediately.

I ran for the bathroom and dry-heaved into the toilet, over and over again, quite aware I was being a complete hot mess before the guy had a chance to even say a word. I couldn't help it, though. It was all different, and I knew. I felt it. He didn't have to say a thing.

He ran a washcloth under the water and knelt on the bathroom floor beside me, wiping my face so tenderly that tears streamed anew.

"You need to calm down, Ty. I can't stand to see you so upset."

Anger sparked then, and the flames caught quick. I shoved his hand away from my face, the washcloth flying to the floor.

"Then why are you upsetting me? Why are you doing this?" I screamed at him, backing away the few inches I could in the tight space between the tub and the toilet.

He rubbed his face with one hand and sighed, running his other hand through his hair.

"I'm not trying to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. I've never wanted to hurt you."

"Well, you're doing a damned good job of it. Where have you been, Cabe? Why haven't you called? What happened?" I was still screaming, and I didn't care anymore. Raw, throbbing emotions pounded inside me, beating against my resolve and spilling out of my throat in angry words and drops of spit.

He sat back on his butt in the hallway, leaning against the wall on the opposite side and stretching his right leg out toward me. He bent the left one, and stretched his left arm across it, staring at his fingers as he made small movements in the air.

I closed the toilet lid and tried to position myself between it and the tub, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't help touching his foot and leg. The contact burned my skin.

He let out a deep sigh and tilted his head back against the wall as he closed his eyes.

"Answer me!" I screamed like a madwoman. He opened his eyes to the ceiling but didn't look at me.

"Saturday was my wedding anniversary." He said it with no emotion, really. Just a calm, matter-of-fact statement.

I didn't understand at first. I didn't know why he was mentioning it or what it had to do with our situation. Then it dawned on me that his wedding anniversary was the reason I hadn't heard from him. The reason he had disappeared off the face of the earth. The reason he now sat in my hallway cold, calm, collected, and removed from emotion.

I went from distraught to pissed in six seconds flat.

"Are you freaking kidding me? That's why you haven't called me? Why you haven't let me know you weren't dead on the side of the road?
That's
why you're treating me this way?"

He gave a slight shake of his head and closed his eyes again.

"I don't expect you to understand."

"Well, good. Because I don't. If you were upset or something, why couldn't you tell me? If you needed some space to process, or you were having trouble with the day, do you think you couldn't talk to me? I've been worried sick about you, Cabe."

"I'm sorry. I should have called. I just got all caught up in my own head, and I didn't want to talk to anybody."

"That's fine. It's fine to say
I don't want to talk
. But you say that. You give the other person the courtesy of saying you don't want to talk. You don't just disappear."

I started relaxing a bit. Okay. So I forgot they got married the end of January. Shame on me. I guess I should have remembered that, and I should have been more proactive about reaching out to see if he was okay with it. But I really thought he'd gotten over Monica. I mean, he hasn't mentioned her pretty much at all since the divorce became final, and since everything seemed so hunky-dory between us, I assumed he was good. After all, I'm supposedly the one he was in love with for so long, right? She was basically a distraction from me, right? So if he has me, why would he still want her? I tried to cop an attitude and convince myself it was all okay, but it didn't work.

There had to be more to the story. Okay, so maybe he had been upset about the anniversary Saturday. But he hadn't called at all since then, not to mention the way he had acted at his office earlier and even here tonight. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

"Wait, are you still not over Monica? Did she contact you? Did you call her?"

He shook his head. "No. I haven't heard from her since she left our apartment in Seattle to move in with Kristen.

"So help me out here. What's wrong?"

"I don't know how to explain it to you, Ty. You've never been married."

Ouch. That one hurt. He was right, of course. I've never been married. But was there some pain or conflict he was feeling that only married people could relate to?

I stood up and stomped over him to get to the kitchen.

He stayed silently seated in the hallway with his eyes closed while I poured myself more water and stood at the entrance to the hallway staring at him.

I was pissed. Hurt. Confused. Scared.

I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to hold him and beg him to never let me go. I wanted to tell him to go screw himself. I wanted to calm the fear inside me, but only he could do that.

I finally went and knelt beside him. He looked so broken.

Again. Like he did when he first came back from Seattle. My heart tugged, and I wondered if maybe he did have some deep chasm of pain I had no way of understanding. I reached out and touched his hair. Softly, lightly. A gentle caress I hoped would say, "I care."

He turned his face toward me, but his eyes were still closed.

"Will you look at me?" I asked. I needed to see what his eyes held. Would the old Cabe be there? The one from before Monica? The one from last week? Or would it be that scary shell of a person I saw at the lake when he returned in October? Or even more frightening, the cold emptiness from earlier today at his office?

He opened them, but the dark hallway cast no illumination on what they held. I leaned in close, close enough to kiss him. Close enough to feel his breath as he exhaled. He made no move to either pull away or to meet me.

The thought of my breath smelling rank after sobbing and dry-heaving popped into my head, and I pulled away abruptly. He didn't stop me.

His lips parted, but no sound came out. They stayed that way for several seconds before he spoke, each word obviously chosen with much care and thought.

"I don't mean to hurt you, Ty. It's the last thing I want to do. But I don't know if I can do this."

"Do what?" I asked, but I already knew. My heart plummeted. My anger had slipped away, leaving me vulnerable and exposed in its absence.

"Things are just moving so fast between us. I can't get serious right now. I have to think about things, you know? A year ago, I stood in front of a woman and pledged to love her the rest of my life. I don't fully understand all the reasons I did that, or all the reasons it failed, but I do know it's something I need to figure out before I rush in again."

"But it wasn't your fault, Cabe. She fell in love with another woman. You couldn't compete with that. That wasn't something you could have prevented. You just—"

He held up his hand to stop me. "Ty. Listen to me. I made a vow to someone. A promise. But it fell apart, and before I jump into something else, I think I owe it to myself, and to you, to figure out what happened. I've only been divorced for a couple of months. I think I need to take some time."

I refused to hear him.

"This is Galen, isn't it? Galen got to you. She talked to you and told you we shouldn't be dating."

He turned to face me, wide-eyed in confusion. "What? No. What are you talking about? Why would you think that?"

"Galen cornered me in the bathroom the night of the comedy show. She told me to leave you alone and let you heal. She basically said I had…done you wrong…and that—"

"She did what?" He was on his feet then, pacing down the hallway and then back and forth across my living room. "My sister has no business telling anyone how to manage their life. She's a revolving door of messed-up relationships."

I bit my lip, not sure now how much truth Galen had given me. Her words had upset me, but they'd also given me a measure of confidence in the last few weeks that Cabe loved me and had loved me for years in spite of myself. That knowledge had given me a huge bolster in being able to relax and trust my feelings for him. But what if it wasn't true? What if Galen was wrong?

He turned to face me, his face red and his jaw clenched tight. "Why didn't you tell me? Is that why you left that night? Talk about being honest about your feelings. A bit hypocritical, don't you think? Were you ever going to mention my sister jumping you in the bathroom?"

"I wanted to. But . . . but I just didn't know what to say or when . . . would be a good time," I stammered and stuttered. I'm not sure how things suddenly all got flipped around where I felt like I'd done something wrong, but I sure felt that way.

Cabe turned and went to the sliding glass door, slapping the wall beside the door with an open palm.

"God! That pisses me off. This is exactly what I mean, too. You're having all these thoughts I know nothing about. I'm having all these thoughts you know nothing about. I can't do this. I don't know what it takes to make something work, but at least I'm
aware
that I have no idea. I don't want to fail again. I'm not going to fail again. So before I get deep into this or anything else, I need to figure out how to stop that from happening."

"I'm sorry, Cabe. I should have told you. It's just that everything was so good, and I was so happy. You were happy. You told me you were. I didn't think it was that big of a deal."

Okay, that last part was a lie. I had obsessed over every word Galen said. I definitely thought it was a big deal, but I hadn't wanted to risk sharing it. Which I guess was wrong. I don't know. At that point of the night, I wasn't sure what was up and what was down. I had no idea what to think. I just knew I felt him slipping away, and I desperately wanted to hold onto him.

"Cabe, I don't know how to keep something from failing either. But we can figure it out together. We can be honest with each other. Talk. Get it all out in the open. We can make this work."

The whole time I talked he shook his head, his hand over his eyes. The more he shook, the faster I talked. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

"I just need some time, Ty. I don't want you to get hurt. You've had enough of that. I just need to take a breath and be on my own for a little bit, you know? I was so beat up after Monica left, and then trying to move back here and get settled in. I just feel like it's too fast. I want to make sure it's what’s right for both of us. The last thing I want to do is lose you. Lose your friendship. You're so important to me, Ty. I don't want to risk that when I can't be sure how it will turn out."

I felt like I'd been thrown into the Twilight Zone. The man I loved was standing in front of me, saying he needed time and space. Basically the same words my first love had uttered to me a month before he married another woman. He was also saying he didn't want to risk our friendship by pursuing it further, which had been my mantra keeping us apart for the last five years.

What the hell? I finally decided to take the leap and jump all in and now
he
had cold feet? It just didn't make sense to me. If Galen was right…but what if Galen wasn't right? What if my original concept of our friendship had been true all along? What if he'd always thought we were just friends?

To be honest, Cabe had never professed his love for me. Sure, we'd gotten closer in the last few weeks. Definitely become more than friends. But he didn't introduce me as his girlfriend that day to his cousin. He hadn't said he loved me. Plus, no matter how intimately we'd fooled around, he'd never actually had sex with me.

My whole world spun backwards, sucking the oxygen out of the room as it turned.

"Wait, Cabe. Don't do this. Don't walk away. We can—"

He cut me off. "Tyler. I need to sort my thoughts. For you and for me. Please don't make this harder than it has to be. I truly do not want to hurt you."

Tears streamed silently down my face. How could he stand there and say he didn't want to hurt me when he was ripping my heart from my body?